What's new - Dec 1998

29 Dec 1998

Four new episodes have been added completing DS9 Season 6 and Voyager Season 4. Episode, Director and Writer statistics have been updated accordingly. 19990114

27 Dec 1998

Section

Update

Size Comparison

This section has been slightly re-worked. The Sovereigns length of 685 metres has been changed to 680 metres, as described in the "USS Enterprise" entry in the Encyclopedia (2nd edition). The shuttle lengths have been reworked to be more consistent; given the various sources available, I have decided that sources will be ranked, in order of importance, as : episode statements, the TNG tech manual, the DS9 tech manual, and the scale diagrams in the Encyclopedia. So far as I know, the only episode reference to a shuttlecraft length is Kirks' description of the Galileo as "a 24 foot shuttlecraft" in "The Galileo Seven". All calculations from scale diagrams are based on this length. The TNG TM and Encyclopedia are rated as canon, the DS9 TM as backstage info. The references section has now been completely updated to include all new information on all classes.

Episode Guide

New additions to this section are two statistics pages detailing the most prolific writers and directors for each series, along with their scores for each episode and an average score for all episodes.

Awards

Two new awards have arrived - the Vulcan Language Institute award of Excellence, and Starfleet Command's award of a Captains rank. Thanks very much to these two organizations for their support.

Akira Class

This class has now been made a more modern design. The Class Lineage, and spec pages have been updated accordingly.

19 Dec 1998

Section

Update

Episode Guide

New today is a whole new section containing guides to every series of Star Trek yet released in the UK. The very latest episodes from the USA haven't been seen here yet, so the guide extends to near to the end of DS9 Season 6 and Voyager Season 4, and all films up to but not including Insurrection.

Each episode gets an episode number, UK tape release number, title, marks from 0 to 5, a brief description sometimes including a comment on the quality, and the writer and director credits. There is also a section giving various statistical information on how the various seasons and series scored on the ratings system, noting the bests and worsts, and that kind of thing.

This section should be updated pretty regularly as new episodes are released on video in the UK - look for about four new episodes per month. A review for Insurrection should appear immediately after the start of January.

6 Dec 1998

Section

Update

Weaponry

A new addition to this covers the Isokinetic cannon seen in Voyagers "Retrospect". It's a fairly short entry, since we know little about this weapon, but it's got three nice images attached.

Stations

New additions to the stations page : the Argus Array, as seen in "The N'th Degree" and "Parallels", and the Remmler Array as seen in "Starship Mine" have both gone up today. Also, there is now a rather long and detailed entry for the Dyson Sphere seen in "Relics". I especially enjoyed doing the Dyson sphere - some of the numbers on that thing are so big they're scary!

Sci-Tech

The entry for "Warp" has now been changed to "Warp Drive". This entry is now almost twice its previous length; where before it simply explained the two different warp scales, it now includes some detailed description of how an actual warp drive functions, system by system. Many of the systems have their own attached images, taken from various TNG episodes. Most of the detailed technology stuff is based on the TNG technical manual.

Images

The above entries contain a total of twenty new images; in addition, the dreadful image attached to the Oberth class has now been replaced with two much better scans from "The Naked Now", making a total of twenty two new images today. I have also removed one image from the Romulan Warbird page - it was a holdover from the early days of the site, and was almost as poor as the Oberth image!

Download Speed

Yippee! The mirror site has been a big success, cutting the downloads from the Demon side of the site by a factor of 4 or more. This means that that part of the site has gone back onto the fast server and is now much quicker. With a little luck, this has now solved all my download speed problems for at least the next year or so.

Bug Fix

Chris Wagner was kind enough to point out a bug in the size comparison section. This was due to incompatibility of the Java scripting with earlier versions of Netscape. The problem has now been fixed and the size comparison should work fine with anything down to and including Netscape navigator 3. Please take a second to report any bugs you find - and please do include a copy of the actual error message you get and tell us what browser you are using, including the version number.

And please remember that the latest browsers are available completely free from the websites of the companies concerned, and using Netscape 4.5 or Internet Explorer 4.01 will help you to get the maximum enjoyment from this and other sites.